NO SLEEPING ON BICYCLE (NSOB)

Okonta still remembers  that morning when a neighbour rushed to the colonial  residence of Dr. Harrison at Ikoyi, Lagos, where he worked to announce to him that his wife Mariana  had been delivered of a bouncing baby boy. Okonta was dressed in his well- starched  khaki uniform in the colonial house when the cheery news got to him. He made merry and entertained his friends to celebrate the birth of his son and named him Harrison after the whiteman in whose household he served as a servant.

The birth of  his only son coincided  with  the celebration of Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960.
Today, Harrison is 52 years and lives in Lagos. He has no  regular job  after  graduating from the university several years ago.
He had tried to sustain himself as a self-employed businessman but his business at Tincan Island suffered from excess custom duties and multiple taxations. Harrison couldn’t  cope with the blows that fate had severally dealt on him. At 52, he has no house he could call his own.
He has no regular  means of livelihood despite his B.SC in Business Administration and Masters  Degrees in two other Disciplines. He has no home  and has transversed severally between being an okada rider and a tricycle driver. On many occasions , he has served as a bus conductor and the finesse he acquired through education has given way to a crude, frustrated, middle-aged man.
But Harrison Ogbonna is not the only Nigerian whom fate has dealt with badly. Across the 36 States of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, there are many Harrisons who have been battered by fate but only few  were able to make a success story from  the school of hard-knocks.
The above story sounds like the typical Nigerian story. From what they taught us in history,  the pathway to Nigeria’s 52 years of independence  was littered with broken  promises.
Nigerians are people  suffering from battered egos and damaged psyche. Ab initio, our leaders had envisaged prosperity for the country, given  the country’s enormous resources but that had been mere dreams. As a nation very rich in oil resources, we have  receded from oil boom to oil doom.  Nigeria  has become  a giant with mosquito legs.
The elders of the country left good legacies. But their successors could not match the strength of the sages.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, former Premier of Northern Nigeria at our independence in 1960 said that the freedom of Nigeria from British rule  is not the freedom of the jungle, where might is right.
“We are not free to molest others  less strong than ourselves or to trample on their rights simply because we are in a position of authority over them. Independence brings with it heavier and new responsibilities.
The eyes of the world are on Nigeria now and there are many friends who hope that we shall be the leading nation in Africa. Let us say with all emphasis at my command that we shall never attain this goal if there is suspicion and mistrust among the peoples of Nigeria.
Such an attitude cannot benefit anyone and can easily lead to strife as has been the painful experience of other independent nations in Africa and elsewhere.”